Looking at life through the lens

31 Jan 201510:44pm IST

31 Jan 201510:44pm IST

Report byPatricia Ann Alvares

A recent nominee of the prestigious Magnum Photos, Sohrab Hura’s photographs are known for their unconventionality and raw emotion. His deeply personal project ‘Life is Elsewhere’, which is being showcased at Sensorium is a journal of photos, letters and notes by the artiste

As a young lad
when Sohrab Hura saw a book on Magnum photographers, he confided to his mother
he wanted to see himself in that book one day.
By 32 he achieved this dream, joining the prestigious list of nominees
of Magnum Photos, the international photographic co-operative co-founded by
Henri Cartier Bresson. “I have been very
lucky to have been given this opportunity. It means that I have to work a lot harder
irrespective of whether I get to stay on as a nominee or graduate or asked to
leave at the end of the two years of my nominee period,” says this
self-effacing photographer whose images are defined by the unconventional, raw
and pulsing with emotion.

Taking a detour from
economics where he earned a Masters, Sohrab took to photography, in college
itself, as a tool to say something. “It is important for me to get to what I want
to say as close and precisely as possible and allow my photography to evolve
accordingly in as organic a way as possible.” Chipping away at an idea till it
takes form, he also enjoys playing with the medium itself to tell a story. Initially commencing with black and white, he
now moves across different formats depending on his subject. Today this Delhi-based, Bengali photographer
is passing on the finer nuance of his work as the coordinator of the Anjali
House Children’s Photography workshop conducted during the annual Angkor Photo
Festival in Cambodia.

Coincidentally, part
of his work is rooted in his studies in economics. “I have worked in rural India
for a good part of my photography life. What started off as a social
documentation has also allowed space for me to look at fiction or something
intangible like the summer heat and other ways of telling stories. Apart from this I have been working along the
coast as well and have some old work along a river. A little of my work is now
on my magnum page and more will be on it soon,” he explains.

His book ‘Life is
Elsewhere’, a first of the two books from the work ‘Sweet Life’, is however a
deeply personal project. Coming to terms
with his mother’s schizophrenia, an illness she was diagnosed with when he was
just nineteen, the project has perhaps unconsciously so been a cathartic one as
well. “

I
guess it was a cathartic experience, I haven't been so conscious of it but yes
everything feels normal to me now as compared to many years ago so I can only
assume that it was,” he shares. The
book itself was not really started consciously so in the beginning, but came
together as time passed. “

I just kept
making photos and once I had enough to look at the connections, they were made
consciously, and from there on of course it was all deliberate. Over time old
writings and current became a part of the project,” he says of his installation
at the ongoing Sensorium. Down in Goa
for the launch of the book he plans to explain this project in greater depth.

In
documenting the broken fragments of his life, his book which by his own
admission is one of contradictions and doubts; understandings and laughter, is
indeed a journey to reconciliation and a Life Elsewhere.

(Sohrab Hura’s book ‘Life
is Elsewhere’ will be launched at Sunaparanta on February 3, 2015 at 7pm. It will be introduced by Siddharth Shanghvi
and Isheta Salgaocar)